Some in HPD keep jobs despite many complaints against them

Why are these officers still on the street?If you did your job like they do theirs, you'd likely be fired - but not at HPD

JAMES PINKERTON, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Published 5:30 am, Monday, March 28, 2011

Ten Houston Police Department officers have amassed 370 violations of HPD regulations over their careers, a laundry list of major and minor complaints that critics say illustrate how police can make mistakes repeatedly and still not lose their jobs.

The 10 officers - nine of whom are still active and one who resigned under investigation last year - have the most violations logged on an HPD Internal Affairs database of complaints sustained by police investigators. One officer has 47 sustained complaints against him alone. Another has 44.

The disciplinary actions for the complaints are detailed in more than 1,100 pages of city records obtained recently through an open records request.

Those punished include one veteran officer who ran unauthorized criminal checks on acquaintances, and who went through a department car wash with a bean-bag shotgun on a police cruiser's roof. The gun case was damaged when it was run over by the next cruiser in line.

Several officers had trouble getting to work on time, with HPD citing one officer for being late for his shift 40 times. One officer left a prisoner unguarded in a room at Ben Taub Hospital. Another forgot to lock doors at a City Jail facility, allowing a prisoner to escape.

The disciplinary files of the 10 officers show that four had conduct and a history of complaints severe enough for the police chief to attempt to fire them, but they were able to keep their jobs because of civil service and police union provisions that allow the chief to negotiate a lesser punishment through a "last chance agreement."

Independent hearing examiners often overturn firings on appeal, as they did with four of eight officers Chief Charles McClelland fired last year.

Critics are concerned by the high number of sustained complaints among the officers, adding that HPD's complaints process takes too long and problem officers are not weeded out.

Criminal justice professor Larry Hoover said HPD's disciplinary system of gradually imposing more severe suspensions, coupled with the ability of an officer to appeal a firing to an arbitrator, makes it hard to get rid of bad officers.

"That practice is almost unheard-of in every occupation except public safety, police and fire," said Hoover, who is on the faculty at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. "The fact that the option exists leads to officers being inappropriately retained in the department, when they should be fired."

"That practice is almost unheard-of in every occupation except public safety, police and fire," said Hoover, who is on the faculty at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. "The fact that the option exists leads to officers being inappropriately retained in the department, when they should be fired."

A major airline would not allow a mechanic to stay on the job if they were suspended multiple times for failing to perform required maintenance on an aircraft, Hoover said, "yet we do that in law enforcement."

System defended

Executive Assistant Chief Michael Chief Dirden said there is no threshold for the number of complaints that trigger a firing, but said police officers with a history of the same violations are subject to progressively stricter discipline.

"When you talk about disciplining any employee, each officer is judged on the individual case," Dirden said. "So you don't set a number that says if you get this number (of offenses) you're automatically gone. You have to evaluate it on the merits of each case."

Dirden said the department has put an "adequate" system in place to balance the safety of Houston residents and the rights of the city's 5,300 police officers. He noted that HPD has fired 50 officers in the past five years, and 35 of the dismissals were upheld on appeal.

"We recognize that the business that we're in inherently involves some conflicts at times between police officers and citizens," Dirden said. "Our job as an agency, therefore, is to make sure we have an adequate process to investigate those complaints, and investigate those disagreements and reach a conclusion. We recognize the conclusions we reach are not going to be satisfactory to all citizens, nor will they be satisfactory to all police officers."

'Last chance' isn't always

In her 18 years with HPD, Officer Daphine E. Stevenson has 31 sustained complaints, including reprimands and suspensions for failing to complete accident and incident reports.

In 2007 she was reprimanded for failing to close doors at the southeast jail facility, allowing a female prisoner to temporarily escape.

Stevenson was suspended for 15 days because she left out critical information from her report of an attempted kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl who was on her way to school on Houston's east side in June 2001.

Errors and omissions

Although Stevenson played a vital role in quickly capturing the suspect, her report failed to list the name of the officer who arrested the suspect and did not include statements from key witnesses. Stevenson also did not report whether the suspect had a bite mark the girl left on her attacker's hand when she escaped, according to the department's investigation.

HPD's suspension letter noted that Stevenson “failed to adequately describe the nature of the offense, which according to the prosecutor, affected her ability to effectively prosecute this case."

"That in itself tells you they're not doing a good job in getting rid of bad officers," Smith said. "The unfortunate situation is you've got a process, through arbitration, that continues to allow these cops back on the force after repeated offenses. There clearly have to be some systemic changes in the process."

Smith and other activists are critical of HPD's disciplinary system, and have lobbied for faster internal affairs investigations as well as tougher criminal penalties against officers who use excessive force on citizens.

Praise for McClelland

Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officer's Union, said he had not reviewed any of the disciplines received by the officers but stressed that each individual has to be judged by the circumstances of each complaint.

"If a guy works night shift, and he misses court three times, and he was disciplined three times for missing court, does that make him a bad police officer?" Blankinship asked, posing a hypothetical situation.

He said the department, under McClelland, has done a good job of determining which members of the force are not suited to the job.

"The system identifies it, and I think McClelland has done a pretty good job at assessing those things," Blankinship said.

Longtime Houston civil rights activist Johnny Mata is pressing the U.S. Justice Department to investigate what he describes as a pattern of alleged brutality by HPD officers.

He suggests local government leaders create a regional, independent agency to handle complaints of alleged wrongdoing against any area law enforcement officer.

"How can you have the fox guarding the hen house?" Mata asked. "Overall, the Internal Affairs job is nothing more than to protect the city from liability."